Reminds me of Dapper
This allowed you to do similar, before being consumed by Yahoo. Might be worth a look.
Show HN: Kimono – Never write a web scraper again
191–200 of 234 posts
Re: Show HN: Kimono – Never write a web scraper again
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
HN pages are possibly the worst case, very hard to infer structure from due to its 1998 coding standards. You'll have a better chance with an alternative interface like http://ihackernews.com/ or http://hckrnews.com (no comments though).
I really wish that HN wasn't even in the running for a "worst case". For a community that seems to be all about UX and innovation, shouldn't it run on at least a marginally user-friendly piece of software with this-century markup? I get that it has a sort of kitschy or retro appeal, but it's just basically a pain to use and looks terrible. I can't tell you how often I click next page to find that I've taken too long…
I like HN because it gives me exactly what I want. A list of interesting links, ranked by what people that I truest more than news sites think of them. Oh and offers comment sections for each of them. HN is wonderful link discovery during compile time or if you need a break.
Re: Show HN: Kimono – Never write a web scraper again
#193Just want to point out that you can use the tool without logging in if you block the prompt with e.g. AdBlock. And yeah, it seems to work just fine in the HN front page.
Re: Show HN: Kimono – Never write a web scraper again
#194Nice job! I really liked, it's a fantastic idea! And your UX is great! Just one thing I've found when testing: I've had some problems with non-ascii characters, when I was visiting brazilian websites, such as this : www.folha.com.br.
Re: Show HN: Kimono – Never write a web scraper again
#195You can use the utility without registration or login by blocking the login prompt with, for example, AdBlock.
Re: Show HN: Kimono – Never write a web scraper again
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
HN pages are possibly the worst case, very hard to infer structure from due to its 1998 coding standards. You'll have a better chance with an alternative interface like http://ihackernews.com/ or http://hckrnews.com (no comments though).
OK so you're saying that instead of using a scraper to deal with malformed data out there (the whole reason of its existence), instead we should use a format that is better suited for machine representation? That's like saying 'yeah I've got this car here to take you to places that are very far away, too far to walk; except it doesn't work very well if you want to go far away, so you're betting off just staying at ho…
Scrapers exist to take data out of HTML, malformed or not, when an API or feed is not available. Yes, ideally HTML is written in a semantic, annotated machine-parseable way; that also enables smarter search engines, better accessibility, interoperability and so on. That's one of the main reasons behind the changes to the standard made in HTML5.
A better example would be "hey I have this cool device that will improve your mileage by 100%, but it only works on cars built according to current emission standards...".
Re: Show HN: Kimono – Never write a web scraper again
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
Until I read this thread I also saw a sumo or an angry onion, but I believe the picture is actually a person facing away from us undoing their kimono.
You see all that in a 32x32 pixel image?
It's much larger than that http://kimonify.kimonolabs.com/favicon.ico
Re: Show HN: Kimono – Never write a web scraper again
#198The presentation is beautiful and the website is great, but the tech broke so I have no idea how or if this even works. This is a wonderful concept and one I've talked about doing with others. I was really excited to try this. I watched the demo video and it seemed straightforward. I went to try and use it on the demo page it provides, going through and adding things, but when I went to save it, I just received an er…
HN pages are possibly the worst case, very hard to infer structure from due to its 1998 coding standards. You'll have a better chance with an alternative interface like http://ihackernews.com/ or http://hckrnews.com (no comments though).
hn pages are not too hard, each story is a , title is in 'tr .title' and link is in 'tr .title a'.
There are some irregularities (i.e. YC announcements without score, more button, self posts) but it's not really structurally complicated (compare reddit, which has 3 "score" fields per link)
Re: Show HN: Kimono – Never write a web scraper again
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really wish that HN wasn't even in the running for a "worst case". For a community that seems to be all about UX and innovation, shouldn't it run on at least a marginally user-friendly piece of software with this-century markup? I get that it has a sort of kitschy or retro appeal, but it's just basically a pain to use and looks terrible. I can't tell you how often I click next page to find that I've taken too long…
No. This site isn't about UX or innovation, it's about tech start ups. It's a constant reminder that something can be successful even if it was written in a LISP dialect and has a bunch of UX misses as long as the core idea is valid and the product usable enough. I've used a bunch of HN skins that were supposedly better designed, but none of them stuck. Apparently it's just plain unnecessary for HN to be better.
So because it's written in LISP it gets a free pass in other areas? That seems like a dubious claim.
Re: Show HN: Kimono – Never write a web scraper again
#200I like the concept. Would love to see page authentication